Mezrabad
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Posts posted by Mezrabad
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From a PM you sent me over at DigitPress, here's that pic I was talking about.
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I actually like Superman a lot, I had no idea of its connection to Adventure, so thanks for that quote.
An adventure in the sense of the word in real life, is constantly having to evaluate where you are and what you need to do to either survive at that moment or to reach another goal. Adventure can constantly supply new scenarios. Sure, it's all about getting the Chalice, but to get the chalice you may need to get a black key, to get the black key you may need to get into the white castle with a bridge. To get the bridge you need a key to the yellow castle (because it might be in there) which could be in the blue maze, but to get there you need to get past the green dragon who's guarding the magnet in the blue maze. You haven't seen the bat yet, but you know the little turd is flying around somewhere with something and will inevitably screw you over by taking something from you when you need it most.
It's a good example of emergence in a videogame. Robinette didn't script the bat to come in and leave you with a key just as you're trying to not get eaten by a dragon, but it happens and it's funny as hell when it does. He didn't script any of it, he just setup some elements with a few simple rules of how things move and how they interact with each other and let them lose in a persistent little universe.
Perfect? On the 2600, I don't think there's a game that gets it as right as Adventure does. There are games that are prettier and more challenging, but very few of them can surprise me like Adventure still can.
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I have an XEGM system for sale. It includes everything you see in the photos below: console, keyboard, joystick, light gun, power supply, Bug Hunt cartridge, XE System manual, XE Light Gun manual, and three CIB light gun games: Barnyard Blaster, Crime Buster, and Crossbow. I'm asking $60 plus actual shipping.
The console has some light scratches and such, plus the purple Reset button seems to be losing its color on the bottom half of the button (were they painted instead of died??). The keyboard keys are yellowed. The light gun has a line of light color running down one side of the pistol grip like the plastic was stressed at one time. And the Bug Hunt manual is missing.
But the system plays great, all the keys work, the output is great, etc. It's just not my thing. I've been hanging on to this since I bought it at a flea market in 1991, and it's been in a box in storage all that time. I took it out yesterday, plugged it in, and checked it over. It all seems to work great, and I'll be a little sad to see it go. But it should be owned by someone who will use and appreciate it. After all these years, I have to admit that that's not me.
PM'ing!
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I'm out of it for three months and while I am, the good Rev makes a Homebrew Odyssey game?
Sheesh, Congratulations! That is way cool.
That's the beauty of this system!
Odyssey is not technically "programmable", but since new games can be made for it, it also isn't really "dedicated".
Odyssey, a pre-programmable, non-dedicated, multi-game capable home videogame system!
Bummer about the overlay film not being available anymore.
Anyway, congrats on your historic achievement. You put an end to the longest dry spell a system has ever had!
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Wow. Just, Wow.
Plus he used the phrase "a tad choppy".
Isn't usage of the word "tad" banned from the internet unless it's being used ironically?
I swear there was a resolution passed at the U.N. on this but I can't find the link...
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Aw, but it's a nice Playstation collection! Good luck with the channel, if I ever get organized I may contribute. Are you just looking for people to show off their Plastation related collections or would my RCA Studio II stuff fit right in?
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I'm well aware that your point is not to display a comprehensive or exact list (or you'd have displayed your numbers and not left off things like Magnavox Odyssey
) but to rather bring up the question of costs in collecting vs. emulation.You're absolutely right on a single point: emulation is cheaper. This leads to the corrollary: you get what you pay for.
When you emulate, you're seeing the games through the lens of the emulator and without the proper controllers. This is a great way to get an idea of the gameplay mechanics, the way the graphics were put together, and the sound effects - (if emulated}. However, it's a little like watching a network broadcast of Star Wars on a 13" black and white TV with commercials and iffy reception. You'll know the plot, you'll hear the dialog and see everything that happens, but is that experience anything close to seeing it in a movie theater?
PS: Look up the word "dearth" it doesn't mean what you think it means.
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Got 'em both. I have a video on you tube that gets a lot of views (relative to my other videos) because people think it's going to be about Motocross when it's really Sears Motocross and all I'm doing is revving the engine on the unit.
the other video is an awful one too, just to give idea what the sound was like during actual game play. Though the game play is not visible here. Okay, I'm all about the sound.
And this is just to show the tragedy of a head slide. (Warning: Horrific Graphic Content)
Muuuch better video here by someone else:
If I can find where my Atari Video Pinball movies are, I'll post them up on YouTube, too, so that random strangers can mock them.
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Yesterday, we played "Hammer the nails into the Messiah," it's kind of like "Pin the tail on the Donkey" but with a different poster.
Tomorrow we traditionally play "House of the Dead" on the Saturn. I've got two Saturn guns and found that this is a real party pleaser when we have family over because everyone can have a turn.
We also have easter egg hunts. On the TV that's not playing House of the Dead, we go through old games and try to find the easter eggs in them. Adventure is the reigning favorite.
What's always special, about any holiday really, is spending time with the family while teaching the kids about family traditions that they can someday pass down to their children.
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I think that if you're not satisfied with how the seller handled the transaction, then you don't have to say it was a positive experience. Period.
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4-port with RF, but I would prefer it to be S-Video just haven't gotten to having it modified yet.
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How long has it been?I PMd Mezrabad about Steeplechase and didn't get an answer from him. I guess you can take that off the list too.
9 days
CLAIMED! I'm glad someone finally wants it. Please remove Steeplechase from the list from Mezrabad.
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Maybe that's my problem then when playing it and getting bored. As usual, I played with the sound more or less muted and with Jimi Hendrix tunes blasting from my stereo...
Ah, yeah, playing it with the sound off would have the same relative effect in an audio sense that playing it on a black and white TV with low contrast on a bright day would have in a visual sense. It's as much of an audiogame as it is a videogame. Put the headphones on, turn the lights off and activate the rumble. It takes place underwater, you should let yourself feel immersed.
Plus, with the sound off you miss the funny period propaganda pieces that frequently broadcast over the PA system as well as some nice old tunes. Not that there's anything wrong with Jimi, but sometimes when you mix your mediums you risk diluting your experience.
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My free item is Sears label Stellar Track.
Not a dupe, but man, I can't ever see me playing it.
Ooo! Me! Me!
My inner geek loves the fact that there's a Trek game for the 2600. Outer geek, too.
I'll put up my Sears label Steeplechase as Karma.
Quick! Someone claim my Steeplechase and put-up Sub-Commander!
It'll make it a kind of pay-it-forward, Sears Exclusives Trifecta!
Now what do I do? PM RickHarrisMaine? EDIT: Nevermind, I PM'd him, it just made good sense.
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I never really bothered with it. The game is super easy, and I beat it just using assault rifles.
If you want some good fun with Mass Effect, play it again, but choose every jerky and assholish reply you can. Funny.
I found it fairly easy too the first time around. I imagine that's because I picked Soldier and used the assualt rifle, keeping with me a Full Biotics person (BlueChick) and a Full Tech Person (FleetChick). I imagine the fights could be more challenging if I made more risky choices with my party and my main; picking hybrid classes or using other hybrid characters. I like that they give the opportunity to bump up the difficulty and when I'm sufficiently interested in playing it again I will.
Sex scene wasn't as sexy or "mature" as the hype would have had me believe. But, hey! it did seem like ACTUAL sex and not just a car bouncing up and down. Well, actual sex with a 90 year old BlueChick, but we won't get into that.
I understand that Mass Effect is supposed to be a Trilogy, no?
Bioshock has not sucked me in yet. I loved System Shock and SS2. I love that this is a spiritual successor. Everything about this game screams awesome, but as soon as I'm past the DEMO/INTRO levels I start to lose interest. I feel like I'm being pulled along by my nose to each area. Not that this design method is any different from SS and SS2, mind you, but after the free roaming in ME and of course the vast open playground that is Oblivion, I'm just not in the mood to be fed plot points and being told to do something when at the moment, I'd rather explore.
Of course, that's not really the point of Bioshock, is it? It's a clever, FPS and I'm sure if I get a little deeper I'll find that, although the story is set, the choices I make in weapons upgrades and Little Sister harvesting will make a big difference in the play. It's on the back burner for now.
Ironically, I'm playing Snatcher at the moment, so maybe it isn't the linear story I'm trying to get away from, maybe I just want corpses that don't jiggle like jello after they're dead.
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Dang, well that's great news, as long as the new management doesn't get the place shut down by a very loose interpretation of the DMCA...
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If the perspective was overhead then seeing them as we did was all wrong. It was more of a schematic.
The Dragon is "here"...You are "here"...
The Dragon moves closer, what do You do?
GO EAST
The Dragon follows You east....etc.
Reading backwards...yeah Icons, that's it.
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My son is a very enthusiastic Super Smash Bros: Melee/Brawl player, anything Pokemon and a big Kingdom Hearts fan. In addition to what he plays, he's interested in playing anything modern I happen to be playing (sometimes, to my wife's dismay). He has come home from school expressing shock over learning his classmates have never heard of Final Fantasy XI Online or System Shock. He's also my playing partner for Chronogamer and is a very good sport about playing some of the "less interesting" two-player only games offered in the late 70s early 80s.
On the positive side, playing Chrono Trigger when he was five was a strong incentive for him to learn to read, which he does very well. On the negative side, whenever we want him to do something at home "besides playing videogames" he finds himself at a loss to occupy himself (though he has discovered that he enjoys reading for fun).
My daughter (6) is interested in playing videogames but the material she desires to play is usually very disappointing licensed crap (anything Barbie-related, for instance). I keep trying to steer her towards Spyro: Year of the Dragon (which was my son's gateway game) but she's just not interested in it enough to learn the moves essential for playing the game. She totally OWNS at Wii Bowling, however, and she the highest score in the house (though I can't remember what it is at the moment, something in the mid 200s)
Air-Sea Battle Entry with picture of daughter playing Air-Sea Battle.
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I think a hack could be considered a "derivative" of the original work and if the original copyright holders aren't protecting their property when their copyrights expire then the copyright transfers to the person who was last given permission to create a derivative work. Of course, most hack aren't derivatives created with permission so I have no idea where they'd stand legally. Not entirely relevant, of course, we are decades away from the expiration of copywritten material created in the 70s. There was a case fairly recently, however, of a Coca-Cola trademark's copyright expiring and an freelance artist who had recently been comissioned to create a derivative work of the trademark suddenly found himself a) in legal ownership of a formerly owned by Coca-Cola trademark property and b) under heinous attack (both legally and personally as they attempted to defame his reputation in the process) by Coke's corporate lawyers to get the property back. Hmm, I guess I'll have to find a link on that somewhere.
Anyway, my point is, if the material is not being protected by the original creators and someone creates a derivative work (even without permission) then my understanding of it is that the derivative work is in fact the intellectual property of the person who made the hack.
Now, with regards to that label, that looks a lot like a legitimate Wolfenstein property to which I doubt very much the artist who made the label had permission to create a derivative work of the Wolfenstein IP. The creators are probably still protecting their rights to it, it's a pretty recent thing isn't it? As I understand the copyright thing (which is admittedly a minimal understanding), the owners of the Wolfenstein trademark have more grounds to sue the label artist than the label artist has grounds to sue the unauthorized seller of his unauthorized derivative work.
Perhaps someone with actual legal training could tell us more about this as I've probably gotten more than a few concepts wrong.
Regardless of his rights or lack of right to sell it, I'm glad he pulled it and apologized. This is a community and people shouldn't be sponging off the creative efforts of others.
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Bumpy
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Bump, new item for sale.
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That is pretty cool but it seems pretty tiny. The sales page says that it's 180 x 120 x 32 mm, that's "millemeters" right? Converting to the stupid way my brain thinks means that's 18 cm by 12 cm by 3.2 cm which is about 7 in x 5 in by 1.5 in or so. That's less than half the size of an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper. I can't imagine the digits being very easy to read at that size, but then again, one doesn't buy it for actually using it to tell time, one gets it because it's pretty cool to have a perpetual pong game telling you the time. Anyway, that's really neat, just seems little.
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Hiya
I was trying to have a go at Warlords on MAME the other day and it is damn near impossible without paddle controllers. Is there an online shop/distributor who has paddles for sale on PC's? Or is this just a pipe dream.
Otherwise, is there another way to play this game on MAME?
Thanks guys
Nora
You didn't happen to go to CGE and play Warlords there didja? Ever since my son and I played the original arcade cab at CGE 2007 (see him win on YouTube! search for [cge 2007 warlords]) we've been pining for it. I did manage to get it running in MAME on my Xbox, but the analog thumbsticks just don't do it justice...at all, in fact one could say they do it an injustice. Warlords on the Atari VCS is passable substitue with its four-player capability, but the lack of multiple fireballs causes it to pale in comparison to the original cab.
The solution for this is a toss-up between purchasing two stelladaptors (one for each pair of paddle controlers) or building a custom control panel from a quartet of dead mice (based on instructions linked to above). It's the classic "money to purchase and effort spent earning money" vs. "Time to build, cost of parts and possible assemblage effort". The pro to the former being not having to wait very long to be playing MAME Warlords; the pro to the latter is the satisfaction of making something cool about which other people can say "hey, that's cool" and you can say "yeah, I made it."
Decisions decisions...
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Tax Refund burning a hole in your pocket? Want to stimulate my immediately local economy?
Get Odyssey!!! The original and first videogame console from 1972.
$75 includes everything you see in the picture. Shipping will be between $15 and $25 (not sure, it's been a while since I've mailed one of these) and I will split the cost of shipping with buyer up to $12.50. (If you live overseas or in Canada, I'll contribute the $12.50 to your shipping costs).
Odyssey Console, both controllers and patch cable:
I personally tested carts 1-6 with this system and they all work.
You may have to put a game "card" in more than once to get it to work exactly right but it will.
This is an original RUN 1 Odyssey. You can tell by the all-pink pictures on the manual and by the RUN 1 sticker on the bottom of the console. Runs on Six "C" Batteries (not included).
All original game cards: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6
Documentation:
Original Manual (unstapled but in great shape otherwise) with directions for all 12 games.
Original Three-month warranty notice.
Original "Instrument Inspection Card". Serial number on card matches number on console.
TV Switch box:
This is NOT the original switch box, but it is taken from an Odyssey 100; it is compatible with the odd RCA connector on Odyssey and it works just fine.
11 Large and 11 Small Overlays for:
Tennis, Football, Hockey, Ski, Submarine, Haunted House, Roulette, States, Simon Says, Analogic and Cat and Mouse.
(Table Tennis doesn't use an overlay.)
All of the Playing Cards:
All of the Football cards
All of the Simon Says cards
All of the Haunted House cards
All of the States cards
All of the original Stickers:
States (Unused), Ski (Unused) and Cat and Mouse (Used and still on the Cat and Mouse overlays, see picture)
Roulette Chips
USED! Which is pretty rare. Most of the ones you see on Ebay are UN-used because the Roulette game is pretty weak. The used, unwrapped chips are more rare.
Note: No box is included and only one styrofoam piece (the original top piece)
Please post below if you PM me here or send me e-mail at michaelmccourtATNOSPAMhotmailDOTcom.
PayPal CASH only. My account is not setup to handle credit and I don't want it to be.
My handle on ebay is Chronogamer and my handle at Digital Press is also mezrabad and I've got good feedback there and here, though, I don't know where to find it here...
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7800 Difficulty Switches
in Atari 7800
Posted
So glad to find this information. Left is (B)eginner and Right is (A)dvanced.
There's got to be a good memory trick to remember that... OR I could just print out a label and stick it on my 7800.
Maybe "When you get it right, you're (A)dvanced." would work as a memory thing.
Why didn't they label them on the 7800?